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Thursday, November 10, 2011

Former Head of Boston College Belfast Project Reasserts That ‘Irish News’ Reports Led to Controversial Subpoenas

We recently received a statement from Ed Moloney, former director of Boston College’s Belfast Project, responding to a letter that we posted October 20 from Irish News Editor Noel Doran. In posts within Hell’s Kitchen, Moloney and Doran offered differing accounts of Irish News staffers’ actions during and after their information gathering at the County Dublin home of former Provisional IRA senior operative Dolours Price. The exchange between Moloney and Doran was spurred by comments Moloney made during a Q&A we published October 8, which focused on Boston College’s widely praised oral-history project. The project has compiled eyewitness accounts of ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland from combatants on both sides of the divide, in return for assurances that the contents would not be revealed until an interviewee’s passing. In portions of our interview, Moloney attempted to provide background to authorities’ pursuit of two oral histories gathered by Boston College, including that of Price. Boston College is currently fighting to quash subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney’s Office demanding access to these oral histories. Speculation in news accounts about the subpoenas, whose supporting materials are sealed, suggests these federal officials are acting either on behalf of British counterparts or the Police Service of Northern Ireland. We publish here Moloney’s reply to Doran’s
earlier letter.

Firstly, Noel Doran
maintainsthat the Irish News articles of February 18th, 2010at the heart of this saga were not based on
Allison Morris’ tape-recorded interview with Dolours Price, but on a separate
statement she provided, saying that she was planning to speak to the
‘disappeared commission’ about a number of so-called ‘disappearances’ that she
was allegedly involved with in the early 1970‘s. In other words there was no
interview or if there was it was not the basis for the articles that appeared
under Allison Morris’ byline.

The first problem with this explanation is that the information contained in
the articles, about Dolours Price’s alleged role in the disappearances of IRA
victims in the early 1970s, for instance, had to come from her interview with
Allison Morris.

Throughout the piece,
illustrated by photographs of Dolours Price taken during the interview by an
Irish News photographer, there are the clear and unmistakable signs of direct
quotes being turned into reported speech. For instance: “She is believed to
possess previously undisclosed information about at least four Disappeared
victims,” or, in relation to disappeared victim Jean McConville: “Ms. Price
(59) is believed to have been one of the IRA members involved in transporting
Mrs. McConville, an alleged informer, to the Republic.” When a journalist
writes that “A is believed to ... etc.,” it means, "This is what A told me
but I cannot quote them because a) that is our agreement, and b) if I was to
break that agreement my source will be in trouble -- and so will I."

Allison Morris won two journalistic prizes in large part for her three-page
spread on Dolours Price. The first, in May this year, was from the Society of
Regional British Editors, which was in no doubt about what they really were.
The chairman of the judges, Peter Sands, praised her “three-page interview with London bomber Dolours Price." If presenting Allison Morris’ articles as
not being based on the interview was so important, why did the Irish News not
make this clear to the society at the time rather than only now when the charge
of unethical behavior has been made?

The most damning evidence against Noel Doran’s claims comes from his own
newspaper’s report of the second award, UK Regional Reporter of the Year, given
by the National Union of Journalists. A report of the award appeared in the
Irish News under the byline of Maeve Connolly on June 30th, 2010.

Connolly wrote: “Judges, who admitted they were pitted against a number of
‘strong entries’ in the category, said that Allison had ‘illustrated the value
of old-fashioned journalism, including door knocking and cultivating contacts.’
Allison scooped the overall reporter award for her investigations into 'new'
Disappeared IRA victims and an interview
with Old Bailey bomber Dolours Price.” (My emphasis.)

Dolours Price (Irish News)

The
report continued: “Dolours Price spoke about her time with the IRA, involvement
in the disappearance of Mr. Lynskey and knowledge of the disappearance of two
other west Belfast men, Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee. Judges said they were
‘greatly impressed by Allison's lengthy, detailed, revealing and intensely
human investigation into the disappeared victims of IRA violence.” That is
“spoke,” as in “was interviewed.”

Noel Doran said “it was verging on the bizarre” that I described his paper’s
coverage of Dolours Price as “an interview.” Would he use the same adjective
about his own newspaper’s reporting of the same?

The
claim that Allison Morris’ February 18th, 2010 article was not based
on her interview with Dolours Price was one of two props supporting Noel
Doran’s assertion that the Irish News played no role in the events that led to
the serving of subpoenas against Boston College. That prop has now been kicked
away.

The second prop is his claim that he is “completely satisfied” that Allison
Morris’ recording of her interview of Price was not passed on to Sunday Life.
It was that newspaper’s sensational rehash of the interview that led directly
to the subpoenas served on Boston College by the U.S. Attorney’s office in
Massachusetts on behalf of the PSNI.

This issue is at the heart of the Boston College affair.

On the following aspects of the affair there is no disagreement or challenge:

The Irish News
article on Dolours Price appeared on February 18th, 2010, and the Sunday
Life article, under the byline of Ciaran Barnes, appeared just three days
later, on February 21st, 2010. A remarkable coincidence.

Allison Morris
and Ciaran Barnes are friends and former colleagues who worked together on
the Andersonstown News and Daily Ireland before their current jobs.

Allison Morris
spoke to and interviewed Dolours Price but Ciaran Barnes did not. Barnes wrote in his pieceonly of “listening” to recordings of the former IRA bomber. If he
had spoken to her and taped her himself, he would surely have said so.

Allison Morris
electronically recorded the interview.

Ciaran Barnes
wrote his Sunday Life article in such a way as to make it appear that he
had been given access to Dolours Price’s interview lodged in the Boston
College archive. The authority for this is no less than the U.S.
Attorney’s office, which wrote in an affidavit (Page
4) to the federal court: “... the reporter (Ciaran Barnes) was permitted
to listen to portions of Ms. Price’s Boston College interviews.”

No one involved
in the Belfast Project at Boston College, not least myself and my
researcher Anthony McIntyre had any contact then or since with Ciaran
Barnes about Dolours Price. Speaking for myself, I did not even know that
Ciaran Barnes existed before this affair.

A telling question emerges: How did Ciaran Barnes know that Dolours Price had
given an interview to Boston College? Dolours Price didn’t tell him because she
never spoke to him and no one involved in the Belfast Project at Boston College
did either. That only leaves Allison Morris and the Irish News as the source.

If Allison Morris and Noel Doran had not known about Dolours Price’s interviews
with Boston College, then surely they would have said so by now. It would have
jumped out at them as they readmy interview in
TheWildGeese.com, and a loud,
indignant denial that they were Barnes’ source for this vital piece of
information would have been their first response. But they didn’t say a word.

Like the dog that did not bark in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes
mysteries, it is their silence on this issue that really points the finger. The
only sound that can be heard is the otherprop supporting Noel Doran’s defense crumbling into dust.